umbrella and puddle water soaking the cuffs of his jeans, is to witness firsthand the tendency for a sage to ignore his own precepts: in this case, Law 37 ("Create compelling spectacles") and Law 34 ("Be royal in your own fashion"). His meeting with 50 Cent was at the headquarters, in Chelsea, of Violator Management & Records, Chris Lightj s firm, where every employee is encour- aged to read "The 48 Laws," and where no one can agree on who came across the book first. (An intern told me that she had been assigned the book in college.) A Violator partner named James (Cruz Control) Cruz cornered Greene and said, "I swear on everything that is dear to me. Call my wife and ask her where the book is in my house, and she will ask, Which one?' I have a copy in the den, one in the bedroom, one-and I mean no disrespect-in the bathroom." Greene laughed nervously and said, 'Wow." "I want to get drunk around you so that I can hear what you have to say," Cruz said. "You and Fiddy-it's a mar- riage of geniuses." Interns and guests (among them two shy young Yankee stars, Melky Cabrera '4' ..... .'ÌC )/' ) I ....., * * --./"'0 *, "\.I \ * 7 I I I "ì '1 Co ' G " G) -' and Robinson Cano) milled around the office suite. Greene and 50 Cent found each other and exchanged greetings. Greene had expressed some anxiety, be- fore this meeting, about how one should address 50 Cent: he didn't feel quite right saying "Fiddy." They had met once before and discovered that they had things in common, such as a ten- dency, in their youth, to carry around, and talk to, little green toy plastic sol- diers, but, as Greene said, "There are disparities: I wasn't dealing drugs when I was eight years old." Greene, Lighty, 50 Cent, and his lit- erary agent, Marc Gerald, went into a conference room. 50 Cent sat with his back to a window, so that Greene faced the glare. The atmosphere was giddy, to suit 50 Cent's mood. "Chris takes all the credit for my work," 50 Cent said, refer- ring to Lighty. "He's the dollar man. People say, '50 Cent, he can't possibly have come up with all that.'" "Well, you know what?" Greene said. 'Were going to change that." 50 Cent, wearing baggy jeans, a black T -shirt, and a black ball cap, has a warm smile and a gift for eye contact, and he '-"'" ; . . r,;- \ --'\ I ........ u "My witness doesn't understand me." began talking profusely and without ap- parent direction, as though relieved to be in the company of someone who could appreciate the tactical workings of his mind. The previous week, he had been ar- rested, on Thirty-fourth Street, for driv- ing an unregistered Lamborghini in an erratic manner, and then, after being re- leased, had got into a scrape at a fashion show, when a photographer refused to get out of the seat next to his. As 50 Cent re- lated it now, presumably for the purposes of strategy evaluation, the photographer yielded only when 50 Cent stood over him, put his hand on the man's shoulder, and said, ''Yo, get up." "Law 49," Greene said, drolly. "His perception of me is what got him up," 50 Cent went on. "The respect comes from two things: admiration and fear." "I t' s better to be feared than loved." 50 Cent grinned and said, "It makes it easier for me to continue to sell music. And my interest is really business, period." 50 Cent began to discuss certain strategic considerations in his career: how he must constantly beat back rival challenges, yet must sometimes also ig- nore them, so as not to legitimatize them; how people press him to do good works, when he knows that the image that sells is the opposite. He spends a great deal of time considering the work- ings of ill repute. "The way they buy you is the way you absolutely have to stay," he said. "It's better to be remembered than to not be remembered. What makes me unsure about this is not being able to control people's perceptions." "People have a lot of envy," Greene said. "They try and bring people down. That's Law 46." ("Never appear too per- fect: envy creates silent enemies." See Rhymes, Busta.) 50 Cent shook his head and said, "It must be amazing to hang out with you. All kind of shit must fall out your ass, in . " passIng. In this meeting, however, Greene said little, as 50 Cent held forth. It was unclear whether this was a reflection of tactics or of Greene's own intuitive sense of his place in this power fir- mament, in the presence of a charis- matic but not wholly coherent power strategist (whose début album, inciden- tally, sold more copies in the United States in its first week than "The 48